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This is a programme
about abstract art.

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It's a subject that can be as heavy
or as light as you like.

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For me, it's just natural
because I'm always doing it

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so I'm thinking about it
all the time.

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But I also think about basic
questions that many people have:

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How do we respond to abstract art?

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Is it supposed to be hard or easy?

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Is it about something or does it
exist entirely on its own?

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You see, abstract artists chucking
paint around, why be so vague?

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But then when they're precise,
how does that help?

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These could seem unanswerable
questions, but abstract art

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has been around for 100 years now,
and is an ongoing thing.

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By exploring the private world
of living abstract artists,

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and looking at some key figures
from abstract art's history,

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I'm going to show you that in fact
there are answers.

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Amid complicated
and potentially confusing works,

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there are hidden rules
you might not expect.

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Hey.

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Hello, Matthew, lovely to see you.
Lovely to see you.

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No gap?

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No gap, I'm going to get you to take
some of it off. Oh, OK.

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I work every day in a studio,
paint abstract paintings

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based on patterns together with
my painting partner, Emma Biggs.

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You know how sometimes you get
scrapes into it? Yes.

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Can you get some scrapes into it?
Yes, that kind of scrape.

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Yes. Like that? OK.

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But Emma's really the generator
of the colours - she thinks them up,

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she physically mixes them, she mixes
up the paint and she places them.

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I'm the applier.

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It's a kind of double act which,
most of the time, the main emphasis

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is on what comes out of Emma's head.

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Yeah, that's better. Yeah? Yeah.

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The history of abstract art
is really

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a history of experiment, so a lot of
things come up in experimentation.

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You've got colour theory art.

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People do very honourable
and serious types of art

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based on scientific ideas of what
makes colours zing together.

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Then you've got abstract art
which is all about accident,

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but all of them are trying to find
some kind of visual metaphor

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which will be rich enough
for what one might call reality.

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Art is partly ideas and theories

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but it's really only anything
at all because of how it looks.

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Looking is something you
have to get used to.

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Here are some abstract squares.

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The kind of thing people
often glance at

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and then turn away from baffled.

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The one on the left
is by Mondrian, a famous figure,

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and the one on the right
is by Liubov Popova who's less well

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known - we'll be meeting both
those artists later.

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Each painting has shapes that echo
the basic shape of the thing

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they appear on,
the square shape of the canvas.

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In hers you're seeing squares
stretched out, fragmented, morphed

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into triangles, tilted so they seem
flying or full of movement.

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In his abstract squares the colour
is stark, based on contrast.

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With hers the colour is continuous
and sympathetic.

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The grey and the pink are a softer
version of the harder

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black-red-white relationships.
The grey and pink take the eye

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back gradually, making space
throughout seem three-dimensional.

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So opening up to abstract
values is an adventure

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and you start by being
willing to look.

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The dynamism of the way in which
shapes are placed prevents

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you from reading that white as if it
were a hole that can seen through.

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It reads clearly as 'over'
the other colours.

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That's not easy to pull off,

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it depends on the minor displacement
of the angles everywhere.

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Pink follows red and grey has
a blue-green character that

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also complements the red.

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It's the colour in Popova's painting
that contributes more than anything

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else to the difference between her
squares and Mondrian's squares.

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If abstracts have got something
to do with reality

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but the artists aren't going
to picture reality - why not?

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And what reality are
we talking about?

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Art had been expected to picture
reality according to approaches

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and styles that were acceptable
to most people -

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a lovely landscape by Rubens.

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But then, in the 19th century,
new ideas about reality meant

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Cezanne could picture reality
as patterned shapes.

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In the early 20th century
the Cubist painter Braque

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responded to Cezanne by picturing
reality as a flattened space.

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A few years later abstract art
responded to Cubism with shapes

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and spaces only.

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People's sense of what was real
was up for grabs

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because everyday existence was full
of rapid change caused my science.

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Artists saw spirituality as both
a challenge to the

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power of science
and a way of harnessing it.

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This counterintuitive idea
came from the spiritual movement of

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Theosophy, which was founded in New
York in 1875 by Helena Blavatsky.

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Blavatsky took aspects
of eastern religion

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and aspects of science,
mostly evolution, and came up with

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a spiritual movement
based on evolution of the soul.

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Abstract art started at the very
peak of Theosophy's popularity.

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People thought spirituality was
like X rays or infrared radiation

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or electricity.

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It could be revealed.

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There were a lot of different
artistic takes on the spiritual,

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but the strangest was the earliest.

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Hilma Af Klint who was born in 1862
and lived and worked in Sweden.

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These are paintings by her
from 1907.

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For decades nobody knew about them,
but recently they've emerged

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and started to be exhibited
all the over the world.

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From totally invisible
she's become the main

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excitement about historic
abstract art.

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A woman doing abstraction, plus
doing it so it's full of meaning.

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What kind of meaning?

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Abstract artists
were into spirituality

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but Af Klint thought of herself as
being in touch with actual spirits.

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She conducted seances in this room

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and received messages from spirits
who were called the High Masters.

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She produced 23,000 pages of notes,
working out what the

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High Masters were telling
her to paint.

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It was all Theosophical meaning.

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Theosophy says colours and shapes
can symbolise the soul's journey.

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The tip of a coloured pyramid
is the soul arriving within

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the golden circle of pure spirit.

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And there's pure spirit,
Theosophy claims,

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when dark is balanced with light,
masculine with feminine.

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All Af Klint's painting
are profoundly Theosophical.

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The not-Theosophical thing about
them is the general look.

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This look doesn't come from spirits,

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because, to risk controversy
for a moment, there's no such

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factual thing as a spirit -
they are mental projections.

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To have the ability to create
such a mental projection without

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suffering debilitating mental
illness is a fantastic thing.

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But when it comes to creating
a work of art, a mental projection

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alone isn't sufficient because art
isn't made just from visions.

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It's made from visual traditions,
the other abstract artists,

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rooted in the visual
traditions of painting,

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explained themselves only
partly by spirituality.

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With her it's everything.
It was beamed down to her

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by a High Master on the astral plane
who commissioned paintings from her.

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She knew what the reason was.

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So that those down
on the earthly plane,

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if they've enlightened themselves
enough, might benefit from them.

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That could be you,
so keep an open mind.

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It was only recently, decades after
her death in 1944, at 82,

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that Af Klint became known.

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Now her work is categorised
as the first abstract art

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but there's very little evidence
she thought of it as art at all.

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Rather than abstraction, a type
of art that didn't exist in 1907,

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she thought it was direct meaning.

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To us it looks like abstract art

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but it's really diagrams explaining
theosophical ideas.

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To see what else
there is to abstraction

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you have to look elsewhere.

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The Russian artist,
Wassily Kandinsky,

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is the lord of abstraction.

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He said it was created
from inner necessity

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and it didn't need nature
to picture. It contained

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all of nature anyway, just in
abstract art's shapes and colours.

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He meant the artist's sensitivity,
his feelings

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and memories are full of nature's
impressions.

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They can be got down onto the canvas
in a completely abstracted way.

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This is a painting
by Kandinsky from 1912.

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Its title, Painting With Black Arch,
encourages you to think about

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only what you're actually seeing.

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That black arch is unmistakable

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but Kandinsky knows that seeing art
is a kind of heightened

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seeing - it's made loaded by you
being very visually alert, and

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by your thoughts and expectations
being primed by some kind of theory.

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The book of the Lord is called
On The Spiritual In Art.

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Kandinsky published it in 1911
and it was read throughout Europe.

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It was the first moment of abstract
art becoming widely known.

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Like Hilma Af Klint, Kandinsky
was inspired by Theosophy's

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notion of a coming New Age
of the Great Spiritual.

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Kandinsky's artistic approach
was different

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to Hilma Af Klint's though.

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She thought paintings were diagrams
to be interpreted by study.

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He thought the actual materials
of painting - colour, shape,

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line - could be manipulated
to affect the soul.

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His line moves across the paper,
it's captured on film in the 1920s.

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He's in his 60s
and has been painting abstractly

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since he was in his late 40s.

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Making a mark, he doesn't know
in advance what's going to happen,

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because he's not copying anything,
but his instinct for making is

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guided by his experience of making,
judging what works what doesn't.

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That's a visual thing,
not a spiritual thing.

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He had to get the spiritual
to connect to the visual.

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Madame Blavatsky was not Kandinsky's
only spiritual mentor.

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This is a meditation centre built
by one of Blavatsky's followers

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Rudolf Steiner.

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Kandinsky read Steiner's theories -
he was drawn to Steiner's

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proposal that we all inhabit
not one but several bodies

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and one of these,
the astral body, is invisible.

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He began attending Steiner's
lectures in 1908.

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By coincidence, this was the same
year that Hilma Af Klint

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first met Steiner.

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Unknown to each other, these two
pioneers of very different types

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of abstract art, were each equally
aware that Steiner's education

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programme in Theosophy had the title
"How To Know Higher Worlds."

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Art could be higher than nature,
Kandinsky concluded.

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Theosophy was essential in the mix
but he needed other elements too.

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They were the primitive, the musical
and the way colour works.

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The surfaces of the place
he painted in, in Bavaria,

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were covered in simple art,
done by unknown artists -

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anything outside the Western
mainstream, he called it primitive.

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The primitive, he claimed, gets to
the essence of the spiritual.

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His insight about music and art is
that music affects us profoundly

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but it doesn't represent anything.

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He said art could be like music.

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His paintings before abstraction
were glowing landscapes, composing

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them gave him a clue - working with
colour was like playing the piano.

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He said colour is the keyboard,
the eyes are the hammers

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and the soul is the piano
with its many strings.

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The artist is the hand that plays,
touching one key and then

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another key in order to make
the soul vibrate.

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He was struck by Impressionist
paintings by Monet

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that could be imagined not even
to be pictures, he thought,

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but just colours
and by his own landscapes.

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One day he saw a painting that had
really good colour.

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He didn't realise it was
one of his own on its side.

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Trivial accidents like not
recognising your own painting

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or not realising a picture is a
picture were the jolts of absurdity

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that Kandinsky needed in order to
get his abstract experiment going.

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So the theory in action,

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the black arch in Painting With
Black Arch is the means

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by which the red shape dominates
the blue shape, bearing down on it.

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The black is the accent
that animates everything.

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Let's take a major rhythmic
organisational idea, like music.

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The painting goes diagonally there

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and is countered by different
a diagonal movement here.

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One movement counters another.

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The arch's blackness is continued
elsewhere in other black lines,

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variations on a theme,

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pronounced or merged-in depending
on their surrounding colour,

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like musical chords depend for their
mood on what chord comes next.

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Well, the visuals of Painting With
Black Arch have a logic

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that can be explained in musical
terms - repetition

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and surprise,
movement countermovement.

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It's not just logic, it's sensual
impact, and in my view it's great.

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Where does the idea that abstract
art is difficult come from -

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from the viewer or the artist?

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What would it mean if Fiona Rae said
her abstracts were spiritual?

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If Kandinsky's rule was to
transcend nature, her rule is

234
00:21:01,440 --> 00:21:03,480
the rule of surprise move.

235
00:21:07,360 --> 00:21:10,600
At the moment, I'm experimenting
with making a painting

236
00:21:10,600 --> 00:21:12,600
just in black and white.

237
00:21:12,600 --> 00:21:14,480
I usually use colour.

238
00:21:14,480 --> 00:21:16,960
What's the reason to not use colour?

239
00:21:16,960 --> 00:21:22,080
I don't know how quite to express
that in a positive way

240
00:21:22,080 --> 00:21:25,080
but I suddenly felt incredibly
fed up with colour,

241
00:21:25,080 --> 00:21:28,360
and I wanted to start again
by clearing everything out

242
00:21:28,360 --> 00:21:32,640
and go back to a very basic
black and white beginning.

243
00:21:34,480 --> 00:21:37,080
I've seen a really nice
sort of loopy gesture

244
00:21:37,080 --> 00:21:39,120
that I think I can put down here.

245
00:21:39,120 --> 00:21:42,640
It really, the process... I know
that it's quite strange being filmed

246
00:21:42,640 --> 00:21:46,040
doing this but the process really
is like this. It's like, "Shall I?"

247
00:21:46,040 --> 00:21:49,480
"No, I won't. "Yeah." "No, I won't."
"What about?" "No, actually."

248
00:21:49,480 --> 00:21:52,240
And then suddenly you do
something like that quite casually

249
00:21:52,240 --> 00:21:54,960
without even thinking about it.
So I'm just going to...

250
00:21:59,280 --> 00:22:02,720
I also think it's important not to
take the same size brush

251
00:22:02,720 --> 00:22:04,640
or the same bit of colour

252
00:22:04,640 --> 00:22:08,560
and repeat it all over a canvas
like a sort of pattern or something.

253
00:22:08,560 --> 00:22:11,640
So although a finished painting
needs to have its own rhythm

254
00:22:11,640 --> 00:22:15,360
and its own structural integrity,
I like the idea of somehow

255
00:22:15,360 --> 00:22:18,160
getting different bits of paint
language to join up

256
00:22:18,160 --> 00:22:22,080
and do that and not to do
with little repetitions.

257
00:22:22,080 --> 00:22:25,320
So you don't literally join
up by doing the same thing? No.

258
00:22:25,320 --> 00:22:29,600
There are differences,
different zones of energy. Yeah.

259
00:22:31,320 --> 00:22:34,040
Like kind of, I want the viewer
to not be entirely sure

260
00:22:34,040 --> 00:22:37,000
what the focus is or what the
most important thing is.

261
00:22:37,000 --> 00:22:39,920
That the whole thing overall
is the experience.

262
00:22:48,520 --> 00:22:51,440
I suppose that, in a way,
maybe that's what makes me

263
00:22:51,440 --> 00:22:53,000
an abstract painter.

264
00:22:53,000 --> 00:22:55,800
In that I think that the marks
all exist as themselves,

265
00:22:55,800 --> 00:22:59,200
in themselves, and by themselves,
as well as going together

266
00:22:59,200 --> 00:23:02,040
to make some image you might
read in one way or another.

267
00:23:02,040 --> 00:23:05,120
Yeah, you're aware that there
are component parts

268
00:23:05,120 --> 00:23:09,520
but there is also an energy running
through them all that unifies them.

269
00:23:09,520 --> 00:23:12,160
Yes, and I'm also trying to make
a picture of something

270
00:23:12,160 --> 00:23:15,200
that doesn't exist, which is an
impossibility of course, but...

271
00:23:16,640 --> 00:23:18,440
..I'll just keep trying.

272
00:23:18,440 --> 00:23:21,080
Maybe that's a good
definition of abstraction?

273
00:23:21,080 --> 00:23:25,120
I think so, yeah.
Yeah, it is, it's an impossible task

274
00:23:25,120 --> 00:23:28,400
but it's a very interesting one.

275
00:23:37,320 --> 00:23:41,200
When colours are related
together by abstract art,

276
00:23:41,200 --> 00:23:46,080
it's not just colours artists like
or they hope the public will like.

277
00:23:46,080 --> 00:23:47,760
They're noticing something

278
00:23:47,760 --> 00:23:55,000
that colour does - how it can be
wrong or right, in or out of key.

279
00:23:55,000 --> 00:23:59,080
How the colour of light in the real
world filters out all

280
00:23:59,080 --> 00:24:03,600
differences and creates a single
visual register within which

281
00:24:03,600 --> 00:24:06,040
all differences are unified.

282
00:24:17,320 --> 00:24:23,960
In 1914, Sonia Delaunay, one of the
great founders of abstract art,

283
00:24:23,960 --> 00:24:27,000
created this colour painting.

284
00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:29,840
It's called Electric Prisms.

285
00:24:31,600 --> 00:24:36,200
Delaunay invented a whole new
way of compressing

286
00:24:36,200 --> 00:24:40,920
arrangement in art
down to colour and form.

287
00:24:43,360 --> 00:24:45,200
What are colour and form?

288
00:24:47,400 --> 00:24:52,720
Form in art means arrangement
or structure, but it also means

289
00:24:52,720 --> 00:24:56,640
the individual elements that the
structure is made up from.

290
00:24:56,640 --> 00:25:02,400
Think of music. A piece of music is
an arrangement, or a composition.

291
00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:07,000
But it is made up of smaller musical
events that are all related

292
00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:12,200
together so there is a single unity,
which is what composition is.

293
00:25:12,200 --> 00:25:14,280
The composition is a form

294
00:25:14,280 --> 00:25:17,920
and the individual musical
events are forms too.

295
00:25:27,760 --> 00:25:32,640
Colour isn't something that exists
and light reveals it to us.

296
00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:34,000
Colour IS light.

297
00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:44,320
And Delaunay's abstract rule was to
create light by scientific laws.

298
00:25:54,120 --> 00:25:59,120
In the 1910s, abstract artists were
awed by the power of science.

299
00:25:59,120 --> 00:26:02,840
If it could cause people to get
round the world at high speed, and

300
00:26:02,840 --> 00:26:06,760
communicate with each other across
vast distances, as well as explore

301
00:26:06,760 --> 00:26:10,120
the depths of the unconscious
as psychoanalysis was doing -

302
00:26:10,120 --> 00:26:14,800
the modern science of the mind -
maybe science could also radically

303
00:26:14,800 --> 00:26:20,400
transform art, so art could be
a cosmic vision of everything.

304
00:26:26,400 --> 00:26:28,960
Throughout history,
artists had played

305
00:26:28,960 --> 00:26:32,920
with our perception of colour
intuitively, but in the 19th century

306
00:26:32,920 --> 00:26:40,080
science began codifying new
laws about how we perceive colour.

307
00:26:40,080 --> 00:26:45,560
Colours go from red to mauve
to blue, through all the spectrum,

308
00:26:45,560 --> 00:26:48,120
and round back again to red.

309
00:26:48,120 --> 00:26:51,760
For a long time this had been
visualised as a colour wheel.

310
00:26:57,160 --> 00:27:02,800
But in 1855 the colour chemist,
Eugene Chevreul, said colours

311
00:27:02,800 --> 00:27:06,600
opposite each other
on the wheel have the same intensity

312
00:27:06,600 --> 00:27:11,840
and placing them side by side causes
what he calls an optical vibration.

313
00:27:15,320 --> 00:27:19,360
Delaunay absorbed that scientific
rule and took it over to serve

314
00:27:19,360 --> 00:27:24,560
her own rule of painterly evocation
of the emotional lift of light.

315
00:27:35,400 --> 00:27:41,320
Softened colour is subjected to
a rigorous but wavering grid,

316
00:27:41,320 --> 00:27:44,200
that circular layout.

317
00:27:46,200 --> 00:27:51,160
The grid is the form she's using.
She's unafraid of breaking it.

318
00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:54,280
Colour overlaps the borders
onto adjacent colours

319
00:27:54,280 --> 00:27:57,640
following a colour need.
Where there is a chance that the

320
00:27:57,640 --> 00:28:01,600
relationship between the colours
threatens to be the visual

321
00:28:01,600 --> 00:28:05,080
equivalent of out of tune,
she changes the colour logic.

322
00:28:05,080 --> 00:28:09,560
Bringing light green over purple
so primrose will sing out.

323
00:28:12,360 --> 00:28:16,720
Or intensifying yellow red to darker
red so it will connect to

324
00:28:16,720 --> 00:28:19,960
a rhythmic pulse of dark
and light accents everywhere.

325
00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:26,400
Delaunay was married to another
colourist, Robert Delaunay.

326
00:28:26,400 --> 00:28:30,440
They were impressed that
their friend Kandinsky liberated

327
00:28:30,440 --> 00:28:32,560
colour from having to picture
anything.

328
00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:37,680
But the Delaunays had a very
different approach to Kandinsky.

329
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:40,400
Think of them in Paris over there

330
00:28:40,400 --> 00:28:44,320
and him working in Germany
over there.

331
00:28:46,520 --> 00:28:50,600
Colour in Kandinsky is emotion -
emotion events.

332
00:28:50,600 --> 00:28:54,120
They're interwoven to create
a dynamic drama.

333
00:28:54,120 --> 00:28:56,440
He doesn't use the full
range of colours.

334
00:28:58,640 --> 00:29:02,520
With Delaunay it's just a simple
design - radiating bands.

335
00:29:02,520 --> 00:29:04,640
But she uses a vast range of colour

336
00:29:04,640 --> 00:29:07,240
and it's a real enquiry
into what colour can do.

337
00:29:11,280 --> 00:29:14,680
Every single element of the painting
is about a fusing or

338
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:20,440
clarifying of form through subtle
adjustments of colour

339
00:29:20,440 --> 00:29:24,440
so that the overall form,
or composition,

340
00:29:24,440 --> 00:29:30,640
celebrates light as a sheer,
overwhelming, spirit-lifting force.

341
00:29:49,120 --> 00:29:54,160
The Delaunays got that radiating
circles layout from the glow

342
00:29:54,160 --> 00:29:59,240
of colour around the electric
lights by night in Paris.

343
00:29:59,240 --> 00:30:02,640
The old gaslights had only just been
replaced by electricity.

344
00:30:04,320 --> 00:30:08,080
Sonia Delaunay recorded in her
memoirs at night on walks,

345
00:30:08,080 --> 00:30:12,400
arm in arm,
we enter the era of light.

346
00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:17,320
The halos made the colours
and shadows swirl and vibrate like

347
00:30:17,320 --> 00:30:22,080
unidentified objects falling from
the sky and beckoning our madness.

348
00:30:29,160 --> 00:30:34,440
In 1912, when Kandinsky's On The
Spiritual In Art was spreading

349
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:39,760
its message, Robert Delaunay wrote
a manifesto called, simply, Light.

350
00:30:42,160 --> 00:30:46,360
The manifesto had a climactic
last sentence,

351
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:50,200
like the words of a colour prophet,
"Let us attempt to see."

352
00:31:09,040 --> 00:31:12,520
The rule John McLean obeys
is the rule to keep

353
00:31:12,520 --> 00:31:16,760
looking for the infinitesimal
adjustments that will give

354
00:31:16,760 --> 00:31:21,280
simple shapes a convincing subtlety,
like light in the world.

355
00:31:22,920 --> 00:31:26,640
Let's go on and get rid of that
iridescence.

356
00:31:33,680 --> 00:31:37,240
Oh, look, I really like the way
that red's differentiating

357
00:31:37,240 --> 00:31:41,160
itself from the rest. Yeah.

358
00:31:51,920 --> 00:31:56,040
So they're very simple shapes
but it's the treatment of them

359
00:31:56,040 --> 00:31:59,680
as well as the placement of them
that's important.

360
00:31:59,680 --> 00:32:03,840
Yes. I do quite
a lot of landscapes.

361
00:32:03,840 --> 00:32:05,520
I don't feel any...

362
00:32:05,520 --> 00:32:09,000
I feel a complete continuity between
figuratively painting

363
00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:10,680
and abstract painting.

364
00:32:10,680 --> 00:32:13,320
I don't see any difference

365
00:32:13,320 --> 00:32:19,640
and I realise perhaps
I'm not really a purist.

366
00:32:19,640 --> 00:32:23,920
Yes, you don't think it's about the
purity of the abstract forms,

367
00:32:23,920 --> 00:32:28,080
you think there's a continuity
between abstraction and reality.

368
00:32:28,080 --> 00:32:30,880
Absolutely.
The visual world.

369
00:32:30,880 --> 00:32:33,240
Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

370
00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:37,280
It's interesting that
already I'm feeling,

371
00:32:37,280 --> 00:32:40,200
"No, maybe I was being too...

372
00:32:41,800 --> 00:32:44,200
"..impetuous",

373
00:32:44,200 --> 00:32:49,240
but it's a very beautiful passage

374
00:32:49,240 --> 00:32:55,080
that now with the nacreous stuff
coming through the very thin

375
00:32:55,080 --> 00:32:56,560
glaze of red. Indeed.

376
00:32:58,680 --> 00:33:04,120
And so maybe there's scope
in this for something

377
00:33:04,120 --> 00:33:07,680
with sheer beauty like the wing
of a moth,

378
00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:10,480
or something fleeting like that.
Yeah.

379
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:14,840
In fact that could be the redeeming
bit of the whole painting.

380
00:33:14,840 --> 00:33:18,520
Maybe I've won it after all.

381
00:33:21,600 --> 00:33:25,000
So the approach is partly
to pick out the forms

382
00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:29,680
and partly to allow the forms to
seem to emerge from the ground.

383
00:33:29,680 --> 00:33:34,360
Yeah, and make sure
the atmospheric

384
00:33:34,360 --> 00:33:37,360
and, I guess, just not atmospheric.
Yeah

385
00:33:39,080 --> 00:33:46,120
I'd be loathed to touch that right
away, it may be finished now.

386
00:33:46,120 --> 00:33:48,200
Yeah.

387
00:33:48,200 --> 00:33:54,640
But I feel with my own work
that the simpler I can make it,

388
00:33:54,640 --> 00:33:59,520
in a strange way, the more
profound I feel it is.

389
00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:13,520
For the Swizz artist, Paul Klee,
whose abstracts were often nothing

390
00:34:13,520 --> 00:34:18,440
but squares, nevertheless the rule
was always to observe nature.

391
00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:25,520
In order to make something abstract
seem true to the world around us

392
00:34:25,520 --> 00:34:28,560
Klee uses tonally graded colour.

393
00:34:32,840 --> 00:34:35,120
Tone is different to colour.

394
00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:40,200
Colour is colour but tone is
the alteration of colour's vivid

395
00:34:40,200 --> 00:34:46,280
bright vibrating impact by making
that colour lighter or darker.

396
00:34:52,480 --> 00:34:55,120
Tone here is mostly dark,

397
00:34:55,120 --> 00:34:58,520
but with a number of high spots
where colour seems to sing out

398
00:34:58,520 --> 00:35:04,520
like sunshine hitting a hill
or light seen through the trees.

399
00:35:15,680 --> 00:35:21,280
In 1914, when Klee was 35,
he went on a trip to Tunisia.

400
00:35:32,560 --> 00:35:34,160
The trip was to alter him

401
00:35:34,160 --> 00:35:38,280
from being one kind of artist
to a completely different kind.

402
00:35:40,920 --> 00:35:43,760
And the big moment
was an evening visit

403
00:35:43,760 --> 00:35:47,120
to the Kairouan mosque in Tunis.

404
00:36:03,840 --> 00:36:06,320
You never really see
the mosque in the dozens

405
00:36:06,320 --> 00:36:09,720
of watercolours that he
produced following this visit.

406
00:36:09,720 --> 00:36:13,440
And of course it isn't Islamic
culture or Islamic decorative art

407
00:36:13,440 --> 00:36:16,240
that interests Klee in this moment.

408
00:36:16,240 --> 00:36:20,000
You see carefully controlled
different degrees of

409
00:36:20,000 --> 00:36:23,400
transparency and colour
that tells you

410
00:36:23,400 --> 00:36:26,240
about constantly shifting light.

411
00:36:28,360 --> 00:36:31,960
You get the feeling not that he saw
something that was different

412
00:36:31,960 --> 00:36:35,480
to anything he'd ever seen,
like a colour miracle,

413
00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:38,960
but more that he came to the
realisation that there was something

414
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:40,560
in him that he could work with

415
00:36:40,560 --> 00:36:44,880
and that he hadn't attended to
before and that he could now define.

416
00:36:50,360 --> 00:36:54,280
The power of his visual experiments
from that trip

417
00:36:54,280 --> 00:36:57,320
is in one thing affecting another -

418
00:36:57,320 --> 00:37:00,120
as if everything is perception

419
00:37:00,120 --> 00:37:02,760
nothing is anything in itself.

420
00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:05,200
Everything is perception.

421
00:37:05,200 --> 00:37:08,680
The light on some glass or concrete,

422
00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:13,120
the organisation of shapes
in the city, the look of the Earth,

423
00:37:13,120 --> 00:37:18,000
the shapes of clouds and their
relationship to the horizon.

424
00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:23,840
We organise this sensual input
just as we organise our minds about

425
00:37:23,840 --> 00:37:28,480
who we are and where we fit in the
world and how society is made up.

426
00:37:32,120 --> 00:37:35,320
Klee tried to do something
about society.

427
00:37:35,320 --> 00:37:39,840
He was part of the Bavarian
uprising in 1919.

428
00:37:39,840 --> 00:37:43,960
Within months this socialist
revolution, inspired by events

429
00:37:43,960 --> 00:37:49,200
in Russia, was crushed, the leaders
murdered, and Klee's dreams

430
00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:53,280
of a communist society sympathetic
to his kind of art were ended.

431
00:38:00,440 --> 00:38:04,840
For the next 20 years,
until his death in 1940,

432
00:38:04,840 --> 00:38:09,560
Klee divided his time painting
and teaching - most influentially in

433
00:38:09,560 --> 00:38:15,040
the Bauhaus, the school of art and
design set up in Germany in 1919.

434
00:38:17,120 --> 00:38:19,760
The first thing you have to
do as a visual artist,

435
00:38:19,760 --> 00:38:23,400
he would tell his students there,
is pay attention to the infinite

436
00:38:23,400 --> 00:38:27,040
subtlety of tonal shades in nature.

437
00:38:30,440 --> 00:38:34,280
The Nazis had different ideas
to Klee's about nature

438
00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:37,840
and his art was publicly mocked,
along with Kandinsky

439
00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:43,640
and Mondrian, in the notorious 1937
exhibition called Degenerate Art.

440
00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:51,360
They called Klee a Jew
even though he actually

441
00:38:51,360 --> 00:38:55,280
came from a Catholic family
and they said he distorted reality.

442
00:38:58,920 --> 00:39:01,520
We all hate the Nazis of course,

443
00:39:01,520 --> 00:39:04,800
but did they have a point
about distortion?

444
00:39:04,800 --> 00:39:08,280
After all, what's the difference
between Klee controlling colour

445
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:12,640
so there's a feeling of reality
and him just distorting reality?

446
00:39:15,920 --> 00:39:19,480
Well, I agree with Klee - I think
there is no single correct

447
00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:21,640
interpretation of what's out there.

448
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:25,800
We each organise what we perceive
and create our own version of it.

449
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:29,000
Klee is trying to pick
that process apart.

450
00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:32,640
He's offering proposals
about what perception is.

451
00:39:46,840 --> 00:39:50,720
In our studio the rule is to
think about what's really seen

452
00:39:50,720 --> 00:39:52,360
when anyone sees anything.

453
00:39:55,840 --> 00:40:02,400
We can only see any kind of form
because of the way light reveals it.

454
00:40:02,400 --> 00:40:06,440
It's through light and dark

455
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:10,120
that you sort of understand
the shape of something.

456
00:40:10,120 --> 00:40:13,080
So that's a fundamental
aspect of seeing,

457
00:40:13,080 --> 00:40:15,280
that we're abstracting
in our works.

458
00:40:16,480 --> 00:40:21,160
I mean, if you were to look at, for
example, here. This area, which is

459
00:40:21,160 --> 00:40:25,120
lighter or one side and brighter
on the other, so that in a sense

460
00:40:25,120 --> 00:40:29,960
you read as lighter, and those two
areas you read as darker and that is

461
00:40:29,960 --> 00:40:36,040
contrasted with lighter tones behind
it and a darker tone behind that.

462
00:40:36,040 --> 00:40:42,760
So it sort of gives some kind
of a sense of the image occupying

463
00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:47,000
space a bit like... As if it had
some sculptural form I suppose.

464
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:50,040
Like a haystack in the field
or a pyramid. Yeah.

465
00:40:50,040 --> 00:40:54,720
So you've got light, dark and then
you've got light, light, dark, dark.

466
00:40:54,720 --> 00:40:58,320
Yes, exactly. And when that is
adjacent to something which does

467
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:01,640
immediately the opposite. Where
you have light here, you have

468
00:41:01,640 --> 00:41:04,720
dark there. Where you have dark
here, you have light there.

469
00:41:04,720 --> 00:41:08,320
Where that happens, consistently
across the whole canvas,

470
00:41:08,320 --> 00:41:11,240
it gives you a kind of pulsing feel.

471
00:41:11,240 --> 00:41:15,160
Yeah, so there is a rigid adherence
to a system of light and dark.

472
00:41:15,160 --> 00:41:16,840
Like there is in life.

473
00:41:16,840 --> 00:41:19,480
Light and dark, light and dark,
wherever you look.

474
00:41:27,200 --> 00:41:30,440
The relationship between colour
in abstract art

475
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:33,400
and what might loosely
be called reality

476
00:41:33,400 --> 00:41:35,720
doesn't always stay the same.

477
00:41:35,720 --> 00:41:37,640
It depends how colour is used.

478
00:41:42,880 --> 00:41:47,400
The next artist is the toughest as
far as giving reality a break goes.

479
00:41:48,520 --> 00:41:53,760
It's Mondrian, who follows a rule
of always using very few colours.

480
00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:11,000
Here's a painting by Mondrian
in his famous style,

481
00:42:11,000 --> 00:42:14,640
severely minimal lines
and rectangles.

482
00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:23,280
It's from 1922 and it's made up
only of black lines and white,

483
00:42:23,280 --> 00:42:26,320
or a sort of bluish off-white,

484
00:42:26,320 --> 00:42:29,160
and a few strong primaries -

485
00:42:29,160 --> 00:42:32,880
blue, yellow, red.

486
00:42:32,880 --> 00:42:36,520
Even these few elements
are reduced down even more

487
00:42:36,520 --> 00:42:41,080
in that the whole
of the surface, or almost

488
00:42:41,080 --> 00:42:45,440
the entirety of the surface,
is just that white, or off-white.

489
00:42:45,440 --> 00:42:48,680
And the stronger colours
are confined to accents

490
00:42:48,680 --> 00:42:53,200
along the perimeters of the square
- blue, yellow, red.

491
00:42:55,040 --> 00:42:59,880
The centre is opened out, so there's
nothing there but a square.

492
00:42:59,880 --> 00:43:01,960
And that square seems to tell

493
00:43:01,960 --> 00:43:07,440
you about nothing except the square
of the outer edges of the painting.

494
00:43:11,080 --> 00:43:14,480
In fact, every shape tells
you about every other shape,

495
00:43:14,480 --> 00:43:18,360
in that it is either a variation
on it or repetition of it.

496
00:43:19,960 --> 00:43:23,200
What else are you seeing in it?
Nothing.

497
00:43:23,200 --> 00:43:26,480
Except you could see more in what
you're already seeing.

498
00:43:28,520 --> 00:43:31,680
You're seeing shapes
talking to shapes,

499
00:43:31,680 --> 00:43:34,440
they're telling each other
about themselves,

500
00:43:34,440 --> 00:43:38,040
they're defining themselves
by their slight differences.

501
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:46,760
He said the masculine
is manifested vertically

502
00:43:46,760 --> 00:43:49,080
the feminine, horizontally.

503
00:43:49,080 --> 00:43:51,000
It's the mysticism of Theosophy.

504
00:43:54,800 --> 00:43:59,200
Theosophy says in the future,
all social imbalance will be

505
00:43:59,200 --> 00:44:01,800
balanced out in a new
societal shape.

506
00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:07,720
Mondrian says his art
visualises that new shape.

507
00:44:09,160 --> 00:44:13,040
Here's Mondrian
in his theosophical pose.

508
00:44:13,040 --> 00:44:16,400
He actually mixed Theosophy
with the philosophy of Hegel.

509
00:44:16,400 --> 00:44:20,480
Hegel said the universe is
governed by rules of tension

510
00:44:20,480 --> 00:44:22,200
and contradiction.

511
00:44:23,960 --> 00:44:28,800
In Mondrian's painterly version
of Hegel's philosophical rule

512
00:44:28,800 --> 00:44:32,320
that every element is
determined by its contrary,

513
00:44:32,320 --> 00:44:36,360
Mondrian offers a line,
but also a gap.

514
00:44:38,400 --> 00:44:41,640
There's a black bar that looks as
though it will repeat to fill

515
00:44:41,640 --> 00:44:44,360
that space, but it doesn't.

516
00:44:44,360 --> 00:44:47,080
In the first case,
you're forced to see that line.

517
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:50,600
Also the edge of the painting
that the line stops short of.

518
00:44:50,600 --> 00:44:53,080
You're forced to consider that edge.

519
00:44:53,080 --> 00:44:57,080
And in the other case, you're
forced to see that whole horizontal

520
00:44:57,080 --> 00:44:59,880
empty rectangle
he's started dividing

521
00:44:59,880 --> 00:45:02,800
because he deliberately
doesn't continue dividing it.

522
00:45:08,280 --> 00:45:10,960
Mondrian influenced
modern architecture,

523
00:45:10,960 --> 00:45:13,720
but it had no interest for him.

524
00:45:13,720 --> 00:45:18,280
He thought architects
were hopeless materialists.

525
00:45:18,280 --> 00:45:22,600
He envisaged
a new-shape architecture environment

526
00:45:22,600 --> 00:45:24,160
all over the world

527
00:45:24,160 --> 00:45:29,800
that would be pure flat planes,
lacking solidity of any kind.

528
00:45:29,800 --> 00:45:34,440
I don't know how that would work and
I suspect Mondrian didn't either.

529
00:45:43,160 --> 00:45:47,640
He's tough on what he thinks of as
deception, he wants to get to truth.

530
00:45:47,640 --> 00:45:50,280
He's dealing all the time
with ideas,

531
00:45:50,280 --> 00:45:52,680
but the main one is visual order.

532
00:45:52,680 --> 00:45:56,400
He provides a visual organisation
so elegant and complex,

533
00:45:56,400 --> 00:46:00,840
that it's capable
of endless reinterpretation,

534
00:46:00,840 --> 00:46:05,120
but you've got to recognise in the
first place that it is visual.

535
00:46:05,120 --> 00:46:08,920
And if the particular nature
of that organisation -

536
00:46:08,920 --> 00:46:10,520
pure abstraction -

537
00:46:10,520 --> 00:46:14,040
accords with Mondrian's
theosophical beliefs,

538
00:46:14,040 --> 00:46:19,520
namely that everything we see
around us is only an illusion -

539
00:46:19,520 --> 00:46:24,600
maya is the Indian word for that
illusion adopted by Theosophy as

540
00:46:24,600 --> 00:46:28,280
Theosophy adopts terms
from all religions -

541
00:46:28,280 --> 00:46:33,560
so a purely abstract painting is
more true to the real reality that

542
00:46:33,560 --> 00:46:36,720
lies behind everything
than a painting that attempts to

543
00:46:36,720 --> 00:46:42,280
capture aspects of the illusion
version of that higher reality.

544
00:46:42,280 --> 00:46:46,960
That is a mind twist
as well as a sentence twist.

545
00:46:46,960 --> 00:46:51,720
Nevertheless, the painting
is a visual work of art that

546
00:46:51,720 --> 00:46:55,280
demands to be seen on its own
visual terms.

547
00:47:01,840 --> 00:47:06,000
Nature doesn't disappear
in abstract art - nature's laws

548
00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:11,000
are condensed into a visual form,
that's the rule Tess Jaray follows.

549
00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:15,200
Paintings that combine all sorts
of processes including printing

550
00:47:15,200 --> 00:47:16,840
instead of painting.

551
00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:19,560
I have to clean that up pretty fast.

552
00:47:19,560 --> 00:47:21,960
I see you're doing something that
has to be quite precise,

553
00:47:21,960 --> 00:47:24,560
but precision isn't
the meaning of what you're doing.

554
00:47:24,560 --> 00:47:27,160
Absolutely not,
precision is only ever a tool.

555
00:47:28,360 --> 00:47:33,040
It should look as though there is
an ambiguity between what

556
00:47:33,040 --> 00:47:35,080
is in front and what is behind.

557
00:47:35,080 --> 00:47:36,320
You can't quite tell

558
00:47:36,320 --> 00:47:40,280
and that is a way of engaging
people with the object.

559
00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:43,720
As you say, there is an ambiguity
about the front and behind.

560
00:47:43,720 --> 00:47:46,480
There's a sort of flicker
between the two colours.

561
00:47:46,480 --> 00:47:49,280
Exactly that, so you're not just
being presented with something,

562
00:47:49,280 --> 00:47:51,800
you are being asked to participate.

563
00:47:51,800 --> 00:47:55,480
Yes, so in looking,
you're kind of part of the process

564
00:47:55,480 --> 00:47:58,520
of what's happening. Yes.

565
00:47:58,520 --> 00:48:01,400
But you're doing small things here
that one could almost pick up

566
00:48:01,400 --> 00:48:04,440
and hold like an icon
or timeless objects.

567
00:48:04,440 --> 00:48:07,880
You're doing things that are
very, very resolutely abstract

568
00:48:07,880 --> 00:48:09,600
with only a couple of colours.

569
00:48:09,600 --> 00:48:11,720
There's a certain type of surface,
very much

570
00:48:11,720 --> 00:48:13,960
a physical thing as well as
an optical thing.

571
00:48:13,960 --> 00:48:15,960
I think that is
incredibly important.

572
00:48:15,960 --> 00:48:17,960
I mean, in a way,
this is how we see the world.

573
00:48:17,960 --> 00:48:19,280
Everything is surface.

574
00:48:19,280 --> 00:48:21,960
You know, when I talk to you,
that's all I'm seeing.

575
00:48:23,440 --> 00:48:26,600
Because I want the colour
to be as intense as possible,

576
00:48:26,600 --> 00:48:30,120
I get it screen printed
with oil-based ink.

577
00:48:30,120 --> 00:48:35,400
If I use paint, it's almost
impossible to get a completely

578
00:48:35,400 --> 00:48:38,160
smooth surface.

579
00:48:38,160 --> 00:48:44,880
The more evidence you have
on a surface of the way it's done,

580
00:48:44,880 --> 00:48:51,440
the less you're going to understand
or feel the intensity of the colour.

581
00:48:51,440 --> 00:48:52,960
Right.

582
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:57,320
I mean, I would like to reduce
everything down to its essentials.

583
00:48:57,320 --> 00:49:01,000
In that way,
it's kind of following nature.

584
00:49:01,000 --> 00:49:06,200
So you're very, very concentrated
visual events, in a way.

585
00:49:06,200 --> 00:49:11,160
They're a concentrated, honed,
condensed version

586
00:49:11,160 --> 00:49:15,000
of reality of the world.
Yes, exactly that.

587
00:49:15,000 --> 00:49:20,040
Very simplified shapes. Yes, and I
try to say it with as little added,

588
00:49:20,040 --> 00:49:24,080
as little pretension as directly...
I mean, this whole very

589
00:49:24,080 --> 00:49:29,560
complicated system is really set up
in order to produce something that

590
00:49:29,560 --> 00:49:33,680
looks as though it's totally simple
and it's just popped into the world.

591
00:49:46,920 --> 00:49:52,200
Jesus inside geometric shapes. This
is an icon in the Byzantine style

592
00:49:52,200 --> 00:49:55,440
from the 15th century.

593
00:49:55,440 --> 00:50:00,600
The Russian abstract artist,
Malevich, respected this look.

594
00:50:00,600 --> 00:50:04,920
Byzantine art stripped down
the realistic style that existed

595
00:50:04,920 --> 00:50:10,480
in Greek and Roman times. Art that
shows in detail how reality looks.

596
00:50:13,680 --> 00:50:17,200
So a higher reality
can be contemplated,

597
00:50:17,200 --> 00:50:21,840
Byzantine art ditched the detailed
look in favour of simple signs.

598
00:50:23,680 --> 00:50:27,320
And for the same reason,
Malevich displayed his abstract

599
00:50:27,320 --> 00:50:32,040
paintings as if they were icons
in a Russian church. He's offering

600
00:50:32,040 --> 00:50:38,120
a modern proposal about simple signs
serving a higher reality.

601
00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:59,160
The rule that form is feeling,
Kandinsky stated it,

602
00:50:59,160 --> 00:51:02,960
but Malevich took it
to the furthest extreme.

603
00:51:02,960 --> 00:51:08,160
When Malevich created his pure
geometric abstract art style, which

604
00:51:08,160 --> 00:51:13,240
he called Suprematism, in 1915,
the First World War was under way.

605
00:51:19,280 --> 00:51:23,240
There were food shortages,
collapsing morale, there was

606
00:51:23,240 --> 00:51:25,440
despair at brutality and death.

607
00:51:28,440 --> 00:51:33,160
The following year, Malevich
was a soldier in the army himself.

608
00:51:38,840 --> 00:51:41,480
You're looking at squares again,
what are these ones doing?

609
00:51:46,320 --> 00:51:52,240
Two of them - one black, one red,
one large, one small, one tilted,

610
00:51:52,240 --> 00:51:53,520
suggesting movement.

611
00:51:54,960 --> 00:51:58,280
Paint is capable of
so much more than this,

612
00:51:58,280 --> 00:52:03,200
so you know we're being told
about extreme limitation.

613
00:52:03,200 --> 00:52:05,800
Two squares surrounded by white.

614
00:52:05,800 --> 00:52:09,520
There is a set of mathematical
relationships there where

615
00:52:09,520 --> 00:52:14,880
shapes and spaces are made to seem
visually equivalent.

616
00:52:14,880 --> 00:52:20,280
So the black shape is the same
as the white space underneath it.

617
00:52:20,280 --> 00:52:22,600
The white space to the right
of the red shape is somewhat

618
00:52:22,600 --> 00:52:25,240
the same as the red shape.

619
00:52:25,240 --> 00:52:28,200
There is a sense throughout of -
this is this, this is this,

620
00:52:28,200 --> 00:52:29,920
this is the same as this.

621
00:52:31,240 --> 00:52:36,320
Movement implied by something
very, very small.

622
00:52:36,320 --> 00:52:39,960
You'd think you couldn't get
much more reduced than that.

623
00:52:39,960 --> 00:52:43,160
But this painting was done
very shortly after he created

624
00:52:43,160 --> 00:52:46,160
a work called the Black Square.

625
00:52:46,160 --> 00:52:49,760
The most famous abstract painting
in history.

626
00:53:02,720 --> 00:53:05,840
He redid the original several times

627
00:53:05,840 --> 00:53:08,480
because its surface cracked.

628
00:53:08,480 --> 00:53:12,880
This 1923 version is a delight of

629
00:53:12,880 --> 00:53:17,760
velvety-rich,
granulated brushy blackness.

630
00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:22,840
The creation of something
out of nothing, a painted something.

631
00:53:28,880 --> 00:53:33,400
There's something absurd about it,
as if with Suprematism there's

632
00:53:33,400 --> 00:53:40,440
a rightness of shapes, but insanity
about how he got to that rightness.

633
00:53:41,760 --> 00:53:47,440
He said the logical consequence
of no-one ever being able to put

634
00:53:47,440 --> 00:53:52,680
back together all the fragmented
bits of reality in Cubism, is that

635
00:53:52,680 --> 00:53:57,080
art should take the next step and
abandon logic, embrace its absence.

636
00:53:59,680 --> 00:54:03,680
Malevich was offered a word
for no-logic creativity

637
00:54:03,680 --> 00:54:07,520
by the poets he knew,
the word was "zaum".

638
00:54:07,520 --> 00:54:11,120
The poets wrote
manifestos for a changed

639
00:54:11,120 --> 00:54:17,480
future in which the food shortages
would be solved by transforming soil

640
00:54:17,480 --> 00:54:23,280
into bread, horses would be free and
there'd be equal rights for cows.

641
00:54:26,000 --> 00:54:29,320
Where you might make out
a table with a violin on it

642
00:54:29,320 --> 00:54:31,480
in a Picasso Cubist painting,

643
00:54:31,480 --> 00:54:36,000
a Malevich Cubist painting would
have a violin with a cow on it.

644
00:54:41,240 --> 00:54:44,160
His friends called themselves
Futurists.

645
00:54:44,160 --> 00:54:48,160
He put on an opera with them
in 1913.

646
00:54:48,160 --> 00:54:51,000
He provided sketches
for costumes and sets

647
00:54:51,000 --> 00:54:55,920
and two years later he elaborated
this sketch into the black square.

648
00:55:02,000 --> 00:55:04,960
He painted it in a kind of ecstasy,

649
00:55:04,960 --> 00:55:10,160
he couldn't sleep or eat he was
so jangled, it all seemed clear.

650
00:55:10,160 --> 00:55:13,000
He wrote that the black square
equals feeling,

651
00:55:13,000 --> 00:55:17,200
the white field equals
the void beyond feeling.

652
00:55:22,160 --> 00:55:27,840
Supreme in the word Suprematism -
the name that Malevich gave

653
00:55:27,840 --> 00:55:32,960
to his geometric style -
means supreme over reality.

654
00:55:32,960 --> 00:55:37,600
He said that the objects that make
up this world are not reality.

655
00:55:37,600 --> 00:55:40,560
They might call forth feeling,

656
00:55:40,560 --> 00:55:45,400
but feeling separated from reality
is the only true reality.

657
00:55:48,920 --> 00:55:52,440
He means the objects out there
that we assume to make up

658
00:55:52,440 --> 00:55:55,440
objective reality don't really.

659
00:55:55,440 --> 00:56:00,320
In fact, it's only by abstracting
objects that we can get to reality.

660
00:56:04,520 --> 00:56:09,520
This has a long title but part of it
is the term "fourth dimension".

661
00:56:09,520 --> 00:56:12,040
It was fascinating to artists.

662
00:56:12,040 --> 00:56:15,640
Time warped by space
or the other way round.

663
00:56:18,720 --> 00:56:24,640
Ordinary existence warps into higher
existence in the fourth dimension.

664
00:56:24,640 --> 00:56:29,640
That was the claim of the
Russian Theosophist P.D. Ouspensky.

665
00:56:29,640 --> 00:56:34,000
Malevich absorbed
the Theosophical lesson like

666
00:56:34,000 --> 00:56:38,000
so many abstract artist then
and built it into his paintings,

667
00:56:38,000 --> 00:56:41,400
abstraction soaring into the beyond.

668
00:56:49,360 --> 00:56:54,040
He explained to his students, "we've
come to the rejection of reason,

669
00:56:54,040 --> 00:56:56,960
"but only because there's a new
form of reason now."

670
00:56:58,160 --> 00:57:01,720
Some of Malevich's students
would become the new Russian

671
00:57:01,720 --> 00:57:04,840
avant-garde that would make him
seem old-fashioned.

672
00:57:04,840 --> 00:57:07,000
They were called Constructivists.

673
00:57:08,520 --> 00:57:10,840
One of them was Liubov Popova.

674
00:57:10,840 --> 00:57:16,920
This is a design by her for the
cover of a magazine from 1922.

675
00:57:16,920 --> 00:57:21,600
The fact that it is abstraction
turned to a functional use

676
00:57:21,600 --> 00:57:24,280
tells you about the turn taken
in the early '20s

677
00:57:24,280 --> 00:57:26,000
by abstract art in Russia.

678
00:57:31,880 --> 00:57:36,040
Clarity, powerful, look-at-ability,

679
00:57:36,040 --> 00:57:39,280
but it's not about contemplating
the ineffable.

680
00:57:39,280 --> 00:57:42,480
It's about making a magazine
attractive and looking at new

681
00:57:42,480 --> 00:57:48,280
things, because it's a magazine
of new kino, new cinema.

682
00:57:48,280 --> 00:57:54,040
To appreciate that as a jump
just as radical as abstraction being

683
00:57:54,040 --> 00:57:56,120
invented in the first place,

684
00:57:56,120 --> 00:57:59,280
you have to look once again
at what abstraction is.

685
00:58:03,800 --> 00:58:07,200
Abstraction strips
everything down to form.

686
00:58:07,200 --> 00:58:12,280
But form can be radically different
from instants to instants.

687
00:58:12,280 --> 00:58:15,200
Even though it looks like
it's just more form.

688
00:58:17,760 --> 00:58:23,400
This painting by Popova from 1917
was influenced by Malevich's

689
00:58:23,400 --> 00:58:25,720
teaching. The difference between it

690
00:58:25,720 --> 00:58:29,480
and her magazine cover from a few
years later when she'd become

691
00:58:29,480 --> 00:58:34,680
a Constructivist is that form isn't
a feeling for the Constructivists.

692
00:58:34,680 --> 00:58:36,480
Form is useful.

693
00:58:44,840 --> 00:58:50,520
There'd been world war and civil
war. Now there was extreme poverty,

694
00:58:50,520 --> 00:58:55,960
violence, hunger, a breakdown
of communication and transport.

695
00:58:55,960 --> 00:58:59,840
And out of all that not just a new
society had to be built,

696
00:58:59,840 --> 00:59:03,360
but a type that had
never existed before on Earth.

697
00:59:07,960 --> 00:59:12,280
The Constructivists identified
the factories as the centre

698
00:59:12,280 --> 00:59:15,440
of production.
Art should move there.

699
00:59:15,440 --> 00:59:18,120
They even changed
the name of art to production.

700
00:59:22,840 --> 00:59:27,640
This is a Productivist sculpture
by one of Popova's colleagues,

701
00:59:27,640 --> 00:59:30,840
Vladimir Stenberg.

702
00:59:30,840 --> 00:59:34,640
This form could be a prototype
for what a socialist society

703
00:59:34,640 --> 00:59:39,560
would actually look and feel
and be like, as opposed to how such

704
00:59:39,560 --> 00:59:43,880
a society had been theorised and
dreamed of before the revolution.

705
00:59:53,280 --> 00:59:58,160
Popova's shapes and spaces
were for definite things.

706
00:59:58,160 --> 01:00:02,120
These ones were for a banner
for a revolutionary poets' club.

707
01:00:04,000 --> 01:00:08,040
This was the cover of a catalogue
for a Constructivist exhibition.

708
01:00:12,480 --> 01:00:17,120
The controllers of the new
revolutionary state were sceptical.

709
01:00:17,120 --> 01:00:21,680
And eventually they did crush
Constructivism and Productionism.

710
01:00:21,680 --> 01:00:25,200
Well, "how are you really going to
connect art to politics?",

711
01:00:25,200 --> 01:00:28,360
Lenin said to the Constructivists
when he visited them

712
01:00:28,360 --> 01:00:31,560
in the new art schools
his government set up

713
01:00:31,560 --> 01:00:34,880
and paid for, when there was very
little money for anything.

714
01:00:47,280 --> 01:00:52,960
Popova taught Constructivists and
she exhibited with them. They saw

715
01:00:52,960 --> 01:00:56,920
no reason to drop abstract form just
because no-one could understand it.

716
01:00:58,880 --> 01:01:03,960
She died at 35 from scarlet fever
after only a few months of success

717
01:01:03,960 --> 01:01:08,200
in the factories with clothing
designs based on geometric form.

718
01:01:14,520 --> 01:01:16,120
And the whole

719
01:01:16,120 --> 01:01:18,360
Constructivist/Productionist
movement

720
01:01:18,360 --> 01:01:22,640
was destroyed by Politburo
decrees about form.

721
01:01:22,640 --> 01:01:26,440
Abstraction relating
to reality was out.

722
01:01:28,000 --> 01:01:33,760
Reality had to be conveyed
from now on by picturing instead.

723
01:01:33,760 --> 01:01:35,640
By propaganda.

724
01:01:58,440 --> 01:02:00,600
Constructivism failed,

725
01:02:00,600 --> 01:02:05,840
abstract form would never again
automatically mean Left politics.

726
01:02:09,000 --> 01:02:11,720
It turns out
when you make something,

727
01:02:11,720 --> 01:02:14,960
you can't necessarily control
its meaning.

728
01:02:21,360 --> 01:02:26,400
Abstraction in Europe
went quiet in the 1930s with

729
01:02:26,400 --> 01:02:31,360
the rise of fascism in the West and
totalitarian communism in Russia.

730
01:02:38,760 --> 01:02:43,480
The end of the Second World War
in 1945 saw

731
01:02:43,480 --> 01:02:47,800
a revival of abstraction
in lonely studios in New York.

732
01:02:51,760 --> 01:02:56,320
Changing the world by
cosmic visions, by spirituality,

733
01:02:56,320 --> 01:03:01,480
or art giving a concrete form
to socialism were not

734
01:03:01,480 --> 01:03:05,360
the ideas context for abstraction
any more.

735
01:03:05,360 --> 01:03:08,880
Being an individual,
being an outsider,

736
01:03:08,880 --> 01:03:12,440
making those on the inside,
the conformists,

737
01:03:12,440 --> 01:03:15,720
see what freedom could be.
These were the new ideas.

738
01:03:21,680 --> 01:03:25,840
Many people think the rule
of this artist is no rules at all.

739
01:03:29,240 --> 01:03:33,480
In fact, you're seeing a rigidly
architectural structure

740
01:03:33,480 --> 01:03:38,520
achieved by nothing
but free, loose flowing open marks.

741
01:03:38,520 --> 01:03:42,360
It's an amazing balancing act,
once you start to see it

742
01:03:42,360 --> 01:03:45,520
and it shows that the standard
criticism of Jackson Pollock,

743
01:03:45,520 --> 01:03:48,760
that anyone could do it, is unfair.

744
01:03:51,760 --> 01:03:57,040
Paint, very liquefied.
Only black, no other colour,

745
01:03:57,040 --> 01:04:03,280
thrown onto the canvas,
and very briefly titled, Number 32.

746
01:04:03,280 --> 01:04:09,280
The painting was done one day
in 1950, with the canvas

747
01:04:09,280 --> 01:04:13,880
rolled out on the wooden floorboards
in his studio in New York,

748
01:04:13,880 --> 01:04:17,120
in a rural part of the state
a few hours' drive from the city.

749
01:04:18,560 --> 01:04:22,600
Ten years before he'd been
in therapy with a Jungian

750
01:04:22,600 --> 01:04:26,360
analyst, trying to deal
with the alcoholism that defined

751
01:04:26,360 --> 01:04:29,280
Pollock's life as much as being
an artist defined it.

752
01:04:30,480 --> 01:04:34,000
He brought his drawings
to the sessions.

753
01:04:34,000 --> 01:04:37,720
Later their lines and spaces
would be exploded

754
01:04:37,720 --> 01:04:41,240
to become paintings
on a vast architectural scale.

755
01:04:51,800 --> 01:04:55,360
He said he was painting
the aims of the age,

756
01:04:55,360 --> 01:04:59,520
and he didn't need to paint nature
because he was nature.

757
01:05:11,040 --> 01:05:12,720
It looks pretty free.

758
01:05:12,720 --> 01:05:16,120
There's something outrageously
free about an artist throwing paint

759
01:05:16,120 --> 01:05:17,840
and stepping on the painting.

760
01:05:20,120 --> 01:05:23,320
But freedom is a meaning
he wants to get across.

761
01:05:23,320 --> 01:05:25,920
It comes from the climate
of the times.

762
01:05:25,920 --> 01:05:30,160
It's not the visual end result
that his outlandish process

763
01:05:30,160 --> 01:05:31,840
will actually create.

764
01:05:37,520 --> 01:05:39,360
However he gets there,

765
01:05:39,360 --> 01:05:43,280
he ends up with a tightly
controlled rhythmic structure.

766
01:05:54,360 --> 01:05:59,960
The canvas is regularly
and rhythmically occupied.

767
01:05:59,960 --> 01:06:04,320
Imagine the lighter lines
without the heavier blobs.

768
01:06:04,320 --> 01:06:07,920
Never mind how they're created,
they contribute to the visual

769
01:06:07,920 --> 01:06:11,320
complexity, it would be
a very different effect.

770
01:06:13,760 --> 01:06:15,120
The web of lines

771
01:06:15,120 --> 01:06:19,400
and angles goes out to meet
the outer edges of the painting,

772
01:06:19,400 --> 01:06:23,920
pulling back, flowing out all round
those edges, so what happens on the

773
01:06:23,920 --> 01:06:29,560
perimeter is a controlled version
of what's happening in the centre.

774
01:06:29,560 --> 01:06:33,960
You read the meaning through
what is impossible to miss -

775
01:06:33,960 --> 01:06:36,120
the materials
and how they're treated.

776
01:06:37,720 --> 01:06:41,160
You're forced to see that the paint
is paint, with its dried

777
01:06:41,160 --> 01:06:46,040
lumpy bits and delicate stained
bits, its range of textures,

778
01:06:46,040 --> 01:06:49,840
reflective paint contrasted
with paint that has been absorbed

779
01:06:49,840 --> 01:06:54,080
by the canvas. Those textures
are the things he's composing.

780
01:06:54,080 --> 01:06:57,840
Their differences are what
he makes a visual symphony out of.

781
01:07:07,560 --> 01:07:12,400
An artist today in Deptford
making something harmonious.

782
01:07:12,400 --> 01:07:17,040
Paul Tonkin. Like Jackson Pollock,
his rule is that harmony can

783
01:07:17,040 --> 01:07:19,320
come from a surprisingly
wild process.

784
01:07:20,480 --> 01:07:25,400
This is just...what I do really.
I just make these...

785
01:07:27,120 --> 01:07:31,080
It's just a question of covering it
with paint, basically!

786
01:07:31,080 --> 01:07:36,000
But I like making these
curvy shapes.

787
01:07:36,000 --> 01:07:40,320
I suppose someone looking at it
now might think, "Oh, landscape,

788
01:07:40,320 --> 01:07:43,760
"hills, lakes."
Is anything like that in your mind?

789
01:07:43,760 --> 01:07:46,800
No, I'm just trying to get
the stuff on there.

790
01:07:46,800 --> 01:07:50,000
But, yeah, I can see what you mean!
Of course.

791
01:07:51,320 --> 01:07:55,280
It could look like the Loch Ness
monster as well, couldn't it?

792
01:07:55,280 --> 01:08:03,000
Except if something starts looking
too much like something very

793
01:08:03,000 --> 01:08:06,960
specific, then I might...
Alter it? ..try and change it.

794
01:08:06,960 --> 01:08:08,360
Yes, yes, yes.

795
01:08:08,360 --> 01:08:10,040
Where shall I put the red?

796
01:08:11,320 --> 01:08:14,160
How did you know where to put
the blue and the yellow?

797
01:08:14,160 --> 01:08:17,800
That's a good point, but now it's
getting more complicated, you see.

798
01:08:17,800 --> 01:08:22,280
But I'm treating it like a painting,
which I do, you see, and it's not.

799
01:08:22,280 --> 01:08:25,520
So we're looking at the creation
of an under-painting

800
01:08:25,520 --> 01:08:29,240
and this is part of a stage
that you always go through.

801
01:08:29,240 --> 01:08:31,480
It's the first stage, yeah.

802
01:08:31,480 --> 01:08:34,520
And the under-painting has a certain
life of its own

803
01:08:34,520 --> 01:08:38,360
and a certain rhythm. Yes.
But it isn't the painting as such.

804
01:08:38,360 --> 01:08:40,440
Well, when it's dry I'll look at it

805
01:08:40,440 --> 01:08:47,720
and cut it into rectangles
of different sizes

806
01:08:47,720 --> 01:08:50,720
and then pin them to the floor

807
01:08:50,720 --> 01:08:53,920
and then work on top of them.

808
01:08:53,920 --> 01:08:57,600
And will those different
rectangles be a separate painting?

809
01:08:57,600 --> 01:08:59,480
Yes.

810
01:08:59,480 --> 01:09:02,520
It's got a fantastic
energetic movement.

811
01:09:02,520 --> 01:09:06,440
Yeah, well, that's the thing,
that's what I want to get -

812
01:09:06,440 --> 01:09:08,000
the movement and...

813
01:09:09,440 --> 01:09:12,880
..but then I'm going
to mess it up, you see.

814
01:09:12,880 --> 01:09:14,400
That's the fun bit.

815
01:09:18,160 --> 01:09:19,320
Oh, shit.

816
01:09:19,320 --> 01:09:21,680
THEY LAUGH

817
01:09:21,680 --> 01:09:24,440
I don't usually waste
quite as much paint as that!

818
01:09:24,440 --> 01:09:25,880
That was fantastic.

819
01:09:25,880 --> 01:09:28,040
Yeah, but it wasn't kind of
what I wanted.

820
01:09:28,040 --> 01:09:31,520
And it looks great as well,
but I'm going to move back.

821
01:09:31,520 --> 01:09:33,760
You'd better move back, Matthew.
Yeah.

822
01:09:33,760 --> 01:09:35,440
You better get out of the way, man,

823
01:09:35,440 --> 01:09:38,240
because I'm chucking
the stuff around.

824
01:09:38,240 --> 01:09:40,120
It's fantastic.

825
01:09:41,480 --> 01:09:45,360
But it's like destroying
and creating at the same time.

826
01:09:45,360 --> 01:09:49,840
Yeah. It's amazing how beautiful
those veils of colour can be.

827
01:09:49,840 --> 01:09:52,320
Yeah, well, it is, but unfortunately

828
01:09:52,320 --> 01:09:55,120
when it dries out,
it doesn't stay like that.

829
01:09:55,120 --> 01:09:57,240
It doesn't... It's not...

830
01:09:59,000 --> 01:10:01,640
HE LAUGHS
It's going...

831
01:10:01,640 --> 01:10:03,120
It's going everywhere!

832
01:10:06,120 --> 01:10:08,360
That's quite good, yeah.

833
01:10:10,560 --> 01:10:15,160
Where do you think the precision is
in what you do?

834
01:10:15,160 --> 01:10:17,320
Well, it gets more precise.

835
01:10:17,320 --> 01:10:20,720
I'd have to show you
the later stages

836
01:10:20,720 --> 01:10:25,560
to show that it gets very, very
precise near the end.

837
01:10:26,800 --> 01:10:29,120
It's to do with the drawing,
I suppose.

838
01:10:29,120 --> 01:10:33,240
And, to me, drawing is movement

839
01:10:33,240 --> 01:10:37,120
and colour is the
most important thing

840
01:10:37,120 --> 01:10:40,040
and trying to get colours
working together.

841
01:10:40,040 --> 01:10:46,120
So that they actually combine to
make something that, actually,

842
01:10:46,120 --> 01:10:48,960
when you come into the studio,

843
01:10:48,960 --> 01:10:53,200
and you've seen that painting,
having had a night's sleep,

844
01:10:53,200 --> 01:10:56,840
and you're coming in again to see it
fresh the next morning,

845
01:10:56,840 --> 01:11:01,160
it will actually make
a statement back to you,

846
01:11:01,160 --> 01:11:04,160
and then you feel actually
this is now a painting.

847
01:11:04,160 --> 01:11:06,200
It's actually telling me something.

848
01:11:12,720 --> 01:11:17,640
The next artist is the other side
of the same coin of freedom

849
01:11:17,640 --> 01:11:20,040
that is controlled in some way.

850
01:11:20,040 --> 01:11:24,760
With Dan Parfitt, I think his rule
is to have totally controlled,

851
01:11:24,760 --> 01:11:29,240
calculated stages that result
in a look of flowing freedom.

852
01:11:33,600 --> 01:11:36,320
I've got a plan, I like a plan.

853
01:11:36,320 --> 01:11:39,600
The improvisation
happens in the drawing.

854
01:11:39,600 --> 01:11:44,080
The previous stages to the one
we're looking at right now.

855
01:11:44,080 --> 01:11:47,480
And that's a print
out of one of your drawings?

856
01:11:47,480 --> 01:11:52,360
Yeah, here is where it gets scaled
up onto a large scale canvas.

857
01:12:02,320 --> 01:12:05,320
So these little drawings
are like scores.

858
01:12:06,600 --> 01:12:08,440
The drawings that you work from.

859
01:12:08,440 --> 01:12:12,880
Yeah, well, this little print out
is like a score that I'm

860
01:12:12,880 --> 01:12:16,000
performing, like
if I were a musician performing.

861
01:12:16,000 --> 01:12:18,960
So it gives me the structure,

862
01:12:18,960 --> 01:12:22,400
but these marks have got to be
made in real-time.

863
01:12:22,400 --> 01:12:27,440
It doesn't really matter
if there's a bit of...

864
01:12:27,440 --> 01:12:30,800
splashing because we're just
going for the...

865
01:12:34,240 --> 01:12:38,480
..trying to make the mark
as expressive as possible,

866
01:12:38,480 --> 01:12:41,080
really get a sense of its speed,

867
01:12:41,080 --> 01:12:43,480
its proper real-time quickness.

868
01:12:43,480 --> 01:12:46,000
This is the fastest stage
of the whole painting.

869
01:12:46,000 --> 01:12:50,040
This is the fastest stage,
maybe the funnest stage as well.

870
01:12:51,440 --> 01:12:54,680
Because out of nothing comes
something. Suddenly, there's

871
01:12:54,680 --> 01:12:58,720
a whole bunch of black marks
that begin to indicate something.

872
01:12:58,720 --> 01:13:02,400
I mean, even though my work
is very non-representational,

873
01:13:02,400 --> 01:13:04,840
nevertheless it should be evocative.

874
01:13:04,840 --> 01:13:09,240
I suggest a sort of natural world
without at all depicting

875
01:13:09,240 --> 01:13:10,600
anything in particular.

876
01:13:10,600 --> 01:13:15,000
Well, yes, it does want to feel like
part of our natural world.

877
01:13:15,000 --> 01:13:19,400
But maybe an imagined
correlation of it.

878
01:13:19,400 --> 01:13:26,160
Somehow. How we pull it inside of
ourselves and build little models.

879
01:13:26,160 --> 01:13:31,000
So it's an introvert
experience of an extrovert world.

880
01:13:31,000 --> 01:13:34,440
Very good. So things come
and go in this process?

881
01:13:34,440 --> 01:13:35,600
They really do, yes.

882
01:13:35,600 --> 01:13:38,000
To begin with there's what
looks like an armour chair,

883
01:13:38,000 --> 01:13:39,560
Once that's done,

884
01:13:39,560 --> 01:13:42,240
there will never be anything
else like that, it comes and goes.

885
01:13:42,240 --> 01:13:45,680
No, it won't look like this
and, in fact, much of this painting

886
01:13:45,680 --> 01:13:49,920
I'm doing right now is redundant
or will become redundant.

887
01:13:49,920 --> 01:13:54,040
Much of it will be obscured.

888
01:13:54,040 --> 01:13:56,640
OK, that's enough of that one.

889
01:13:56,640 --> 01:13:58,240
So this has got to dry now?

890
01:13:58,240 --> 01:14:00,800
This has got to dry,
yeah, we can't have any drips

891
01:14:00,800 --> 01:14:03,120
because a drip would
indicate gravity. Yeah.

892
01:14:03,120 --> 01:14:06,080
So really we want this
to be floating.

893
01:14:06,080 --> 01:14:09,480
Like all these things, I want them
to feel like a bunch of stuff

894
01:14:09,480 --> 01:14:13,280
thrown up in the air and then you've
taken a photograph of it. I see.

895
01:14:13,280 --> 01:14:15,560
As it just reaches its zenith.

896
01:14:45,000 --> 01:14:48,640
In abstract art, since Jackson
Pollock, there is often a sense

897
01:14:48,640 --> 01:14:52,720
that meaning might be as simple
as just the way paint is put on.

898
01:14:54,160 --> 01:14:58,400
Paint can be applied any way,
sometimes frankly and flatly,

899
01:14:58,400 --> 01:15:02,240
as if the surface didn't mean
anything or, which is what

900
01:15:02,240 --> 01:15:05,600
these paintings
by Mark Rothko are doing,

901
01:15:05,600 --> 01:15:09,680
so a sort of breathing surface
is the main theme, the main

902
01:15:09,680 --> 01:15:14,040
effect by which the painting
is able to convey its message.

903
01:15:32,480 --> 01:15:36,000
Rothko was a New Yorker whose family
immigrated from Russia

904
01:15:36,000 --> 01:15:37,440
when he was a child.

905
01:15:40,720 --> 01:15:43,920
Until middle-age
he was unsuccessful and poor.

906
01:15:43,920 --> 01:15:46,560
He sympathised with
the revolutionary,

907
01:15:46,560 --> 01:15:49,680
political movements in the USA
in those times.

908
01:15:55,360 --> 01:15:59,240
He lived an isolated existence.
He was unstable and so

909
01:15:59,240 --> 01:16:03,880
when success came in the 1950s,
its suddenness was overwhelming.

910
01:16:05,840 --> 01:16:08,280
The paintings we were just
looking at were done by him

911
01:16:08,280 --> 01:16:12,760
in the late '50s as a commission
for the new Seagram building

912
01:16:12,760 --> 01:16:18,400
for the exclusive restaurant on the
top floor called the Four Seasons.

913
01:16:18,400 --> 01:16:22,480
But having painted them,
he became furious at the idea of

914
01:16:22,480 --> 01:16:27,000
"rich bastards", as he called them,
eating in front of his work.

915
01:16:29,680 --> 01:16:33,240
Ten years later he gave
the paintings away free to what

916
01:16:33,240 --> 01:16:36,160
was then the Tate Gallery.

917
01:16:36,160 --> 01:16:39,200
He was fanatic about how they
should be displayed. The lighting

918
01:16:39,200 --> 01:16:43,080
and spacing, even today,
is exactly as Rothko wanted.

919
01:16:46,840 --> 01:16:51,720
By grim coincidence, he died
on the day they arrived in Britain.

920
01:16:53,760 --> 01:16:55,800
Rothko committed suicide

921
01:16:55,800 --> 01:17:00,120
and his paintings don't depict
anything so it's only natural in

922
01:17:00,120 --> 01:17:06,160
a way that we should wish that death
might be what they're communicating.

923
01:17:06,160 --> 01:17:09,120
I don't personally think that.

924
01:17:09,120 --> 01:17:12,880
That's a human tragedy,
but the meaning

925
01:17:12,880 --> 01:17:17,480
of the paintings is different
to that profound visual lift.

926
01:17:19,120 --> 01:17:22,480
That's the same meaning
that a cathedral has,

927
01:17:22,480 --> 01:17:25,960
or the inside of an Egyptian tomb,
or a Greek temple.

928
01:17:25,960 --> 01:17:29,000
Death is part of those
things as well,

929
01:17:29,000 --> 01:17:32,600
but in such a universal sense
that it's as if the marvel

930
01:17:32,600 --> 01:17:36,640
of the whole of existence,
not just its termination point,

931
01:17:36,640 --> 01:17:39,440
is being celebrated.

932
01:17:39,440 --> 01:17:43,160
Death as part of
some kind of gigantic cosmic unity.

933
01:17:45,360 --> 01:17:49,720
Rather than getting carried away
with what's become over the years a

934
01:17:49,720 --> 01:17:54,920
sort of rhetoric of heavy-breathing
emotion, let's try instead

935
01:17:54,920 --> 01:17:59,520
to understand what these paintings
actually are and how they work.

936
01:18:08,400 --> 01:18:10,640
That sense of a surface
that is active

937
01:18:10,640 --> 01:18:14,040
and expressive gets more
and more insistent as you look.

938
01:18:16,560 --> 01:18:20,800
The grey is applied
lightly like a mist, diffused,

939
01:18:20,800 --> 01:18:26,920
so the surface becomes cloudy not
sheer, animated not still or inert.

940
01:18:31,920 --> 01:18:36,040
The painting as a whole is
created in terms of misty breakups

941
01:18:36,040 --> 01:18:38,760
and stuttering breakups,

942
01:18:38,760 --> 01:18:42,080
and then passages that are all
about merging and flowing.

943
01:18:47,520 --> 01:18:52,760
So if the feeling is, "Well, it's
all dark" or "It's all red",

944
01:18:52,760 --> 01:18:58,280
the experience of darkness
and redness is a nuanced one.

945
01:19:03,160 --> 01:19:07,960
A simple colour theme of blackish
red is elaborated

946
01:19:07,960 --> 01:19:12,080
and celebrated so that the whole
of existence is celebrated.

947
01:19:14,560 --> 01:19:17,720
The room is
a sort of Pharaoh's tomb.

948
01:19:17,720 --> 01:19:22,720
In his control-freakery he's
a megalomaniac like the pharaohs.

949
01:19:22,720 --> 01:19:27,480
He's the pharaoh and the pharaoh
decorator in a Rothko

950
01:19:27,480 --> 01:19:31,480
centric-universe. He's
the architect, the painter,

951
01:19:31,480 --> 01:19:33,000
and the philosopher priest.

952
01:19:36,480 --> 01:19:39,320
All that pretentiousness would be
off-putting

953
01:19:39,320 --> 01:19:41,480
if it weren't for the rule
of painterly

954
01:19:41,480 --> 01:19:46,240
transformation that is the true
interest of this abstract art.

955
01:19:46,240 --> 01:19:50,000
The quality of surprise
in the treatment of a surface

956
01:19:50,000 --> 01:19:54,400
so that looming darkness
is alive with energy.

957
01:19:58,240 --> 01:20:01,440
The rule that colours placed next
to each other will always

958
01:20:01,440 --> 01:20:04,880
suggest depth,
different positions in space,

959
01:20:04,880 --> 01:20:09,000
was exciting to artists
like Paul Klee and Mark Rothko,

960
01:20:09,000 --> 01:20:13,920
and has been followed by Albert
Irvin, who's now 92, for 50 years.

961
01:20:23,040 --> 01:20:24,800
Put it down in front of those tins.

962
01:20:24,800 --> 01:20:26,360
Yeah, that's it.

963
01:20:26,360 --> 01:20:30,760
And drop it onto its back, too.

964
01:20:30,760 --> 01:20:34,360
OK, and put those under.

965
01:20:34,360 --> 01:20:37,640
Oh, God, it's nice to have
somebody helping.

966
01:20:37,640 --> 01:20:40,160
I'd better come and be your
assistant. It's a real luxury.

967
01:20:46,360 --> 01:20:48,440
They're abstract paintings

968
01:20:48,440 --> 01:20:53,360
but they are informed by my movement
through the world.

969
01:20:55,360 --> 01:21:00,360
Those marks seem sort of structural
and they have their own life...

970
01:21:00,360 --> 01:21:01,840
Yes. ..as events.

971
01:21:01,840 --> 01:21:04,240
Structural in terms
of the whole unity

972
01:21:04,240 --> 01:21:06,320
and they have their own personality.

973
01:21:06,320 --> 01:21:11,600
Yes, I'd like to think so.

974
01:21:11,600 --> 01:21:17,240
You know, in so far as painting is
a language, I think the brush

975
01:21:17,240 --> 01:21:18,640
marks are the verbs.

976
01:21:19,880 --> 01:21:24,280
Although you can probably analyse
that out of extinction

977
01:21:24,280 --> 01:21:25,800
if you wanted to.

978
01:21:25,800 --> 01:21:28,360
No, I think painting as a language
is a good idea,

979
01:21:28,360 --> 01:21:31,640
and the brush marks as verbs
is a good idea.

980
01:21:31,640 --> 01:21:36,000
There are things behind things,
you know?

981
01:21:36,000 --> 01:21:39,200
Like in the space of this
studio now,

982
01:21:39,200 --> 01:21:42,400
if I look across the room,

983
01:21:42,400 --> 01:21:45,680
you're standing in front

984
01:21:45,680 --> 01:21:51,080
of the wall, so it's those
sorts of perceptions.

985
01:21:51,080 --> 01:21:53,560
I understand completely
what you are saying

986
01:21:53,560 --> 01:21:56,600
but it's as if reality
itself is layered. Yeah.

987
01:21:56,600 --> 01:22:00,440
And that's the kind of thing
you are looking for in the painting?

988
01:22:00,440 --> 01:22:02,480
Yes. But you're doing it through
colour?

989
01:22:02,480 --> 01:22:05,160
Yes.
Through a rather pure colour.

990
01:22:05,160 --> 01:22:08,360
When I first started painting
abstract paintings

991
01:22:08,360 --> 01:22:11,080
I usually use very sombre colours.

992
01:22:11,080 --> 01:22:17,640
I had the idea that
an important painting

993
01:22:17,640 --> 01:22:21,240
had to be dark, earth colours.

994
01:22:24,800 --> 01:22:28,120
The horrible thing is washing
all these brushes. I bet.

995
01:22:38,040 --> 01:22:42,120
The visual impressiveness
of abstract art from the 1950s

996
01:22:42,120 --> 01:22:45,600
and 1910s is
carried on by abstract art now,

997
01:22:45,600 --> 01:22:50,040
but often not with the old
sense of abstract purity.

998
01:22:54,080 --> 01:22:57,280
Here's an abstract art that's
full of glinting

999
01:22:57,280 --> 01:23:01,600
reflections by the Ghanaian
artist El Anatsui.

1000
01:23:05,280 --> 01:23:09,960
Unlike artists who work on a flat
canvas and create patterns,

1001
01:23:09,960 --> 01:23:14,560
the visual complexity of which
must be structured into the object,

1002
01:23:14,560 --> 01:23:20,920
El Anatsui allows his work to
behave like textiles and the shadow

1003
01:23:20,920 --> 01:23:24,840
and light created by the drapery
creates an additional

1004
01:23:24,840 --> 01:23:28,640
focus for what you're looking at
and is part of the thought

1005
01:23:28,640 --> 01:23:31,160
process involved in the making.

1006
01:23:40,920 --> 01:23:43,560
It's a lesson in setting up meaning.

1007
01:23:43,560 --> 01:23:46,960
Meaning of a simpler less
philosophical kind that the

1008
01:23:46,960 --> 01:23:51,680
early abstract artists went in for -
he offers a jigsaw of meanings

1009
01:23:51,680 --> 01:23:54,440
that are abstract
but easily readable.

1010
01:23:57,240 --> 01:24:02,160
Its structure imitates a traditional
Ghanaian fabric called Kente

1011
01:24:02,160 --> 01:24:07,040
cloth, woven for centuries by labour
intensive processes so the

1012
01:24:07,040 --> 01:24:11,320
visual effect is very rich. Kente
cloth is a source of national pride.

1013
01:24:17,960 --> 01:24:21,840
If history is in the picture then
the history of colonialism

1014
01:24:21,840 --> 01:24:25,680
must be in there too with
all its human wretchedness.

1015
01:24:25,680 --> 01:24:30,680
And the materials El Anatsui uses
suggest waste and squalor.

1016
01:24:39,640 --> 01:24:43,520
A work of abstract art
made of bottleneck wrappers.

1017
01:24:43,520 --> 01:24:47,240
The bits of metal foil that go round
the neck of a whiskey bottle

1018
01:24:47,240 --> 01:24:48,600
or a gin bottle.

1019
01:24:48,600 --> 01:24:51,920
Rubbish, really,
scavenged from the street.

1020
01:24:51,920 --> 01:24:55,640
He makes it look like gold
but it's old bits of foil.

1021
01:24:55,640 --> 01:24:58,960
It's rubbish that reads as gold.

1022
01:24:58,960 --> 01:25:01,760
There's an ambiguity or double
meaning.

1023
01:25:01,760 --> 01:25:06,080
Baseness that can be transformed
into gold, with gold

1024
01:25:06,080 --> 01:25:10,840
as the good thing, but also
baseness might be indistinguishable

1025
01:25:10,840 --> 01:25:13,880
from or interchangeable with gold.

1026
01:25:13,880 --> 01:25:18,840
So gold's shimmer, its
attractiveness, is untrustworthy.

1027
01:25:24,360 --> 01:25:28,000
It always depends where you
stand in relation to it as to

1028
01:25:28,000 --> 01:25:30,120
whether or not gold DOES shimmer.

1029
01:25:30,120 --> 01:25:36,160
So maybe the impression of gold here
is a metaphor for delusion?

1030
01:25:36,160 --> 01:25:40,080
The pioneer abstract artists
100 years ago thought

1031
01:25:40,080 --> 01:25:43,120
abstract values were
the path to truth.

1032
01:25:43,120 --> 01:25:48,000
They took out any meanings to do
with history, society, nationhood.

1033
01:25:48,000 --> 01:25:51,400
Those are the meanings
El Anatsui built in.

1034
01:25:53,040 --> 01:25:56,920
He presents you with a powerful
visual blast,

1035
01:25:56,920 --> 01:26:00,160
accompanied by questions about what
power might mean.

1036
01:26:12,360 --> 01:26:14,840
Today all art competes in market

1037
01:26:14,840 --> 01:26:18,160
and purely abstract art is
relatively rare.

1038
01:26:20,320 --> 01:26:23,920
Abstract art that has clues
about easily gettable meaning

1039
01:26:23,920 --> 01:26:25,360
is preferred.

1040
01:26:25,360 --> 01:26:29,000
29 million, 30 million,
31 million.

1041
01:26:29,000 --> 01:26:32,240
Abstract art of the past gets
huge prices today.

1042
01:26:32,240 --> 01:26:34,600
77 million and selling.

1043
01:26:34,600 --> 01:26:36,920
That much for a Rothko.

1044
01:26:38,480 --> 01:26:41,440
Not because he's subtle
about red and black,

1045
01:26:41,440 --> 01:26:46,400
but because his high status name is
synonymous with fabulous success.

1046
01:26:50,840 --> 01:26:53,000
Money is never really the point.

1047
01:26:54,600 --> 01:26:59,080
Rothko's predecessor,
Hilma Af Klint, said,

1048
01:26:59,080 --> 01:27:03,120
"W is material, U is spiritual."

1049
01:27:03,120 --> 01:27:07,640
She really did believe what
she was doing could alter the world.

1050
01:27:07,640 --> 01:27:11,480
If there's a rule of early abstract
art as a whole it is that it

1051
01:27:11,480 --> 01:27:14,320
was incredibly optimistic.

1052
01:27:14,320 --> 01:27:18,240
So the rule of optimism passing
on is the rule I'm now going to

1053
01:27:18,240 --> 01:27:22,440
sign off with, with a work
by an artist who was born the same

1054
01:27:22,440 --> 01:27:25,880
year that Hilma Af Klint went up to
the spirits in the sky.

1055
01:27:36,680 --> 01:27:41,840
Here's a kind of abstract art that's
unequivocally visually amazing

1056
01:27:41,840 --> 01:27:46,560
but opened ended as to whom that
amazement is for

1057
01:27:46,560 --> 01:27:48,680
and where it's coming from.

1058
01:27:48,680 --> 01:27:52,280
It's partly sinister because it's
about wealth and we live in a

1059
01:27:52,280 --> 01:27:56,960
time where wealth is sinister
and it's partly optimistic because

1060
01:27:56,960 --> 01:28:03,360
wealth is referred to by rubbish,
old bits of thrown away metal foil.

1061
01:28:03,360 --> 01:28:07,800
So wealth's mystic is removed,
its intimation is removed,

1062
01:28:07,800 --> 01:28:10,000
we can see through it.

1063
01:28:10,000 --> 01:28:12,360
But we're still getting the pleasure

1064
01:28:12,360 --> 01:28:16,080
and with that pleasure, a sense
of a different kind of wealth,

1065
01:28:16,080 --> 01:28:21,360
the wealth of ideas as art
processes contradictions.